Samuel David Epstein

The essays in this important collection explore wide-ranging aspects of the syntax and semantics of human languages. Key topics covered include movement phenomena and the syntax of logical form, methods in generative linguistics and the role of rules vs. principles in syntactic theory. This volume makes a vital contribution to substantive and methodological debates in linguistic theory.

Essays in Syntactic Theory

T. Daniel Seely

Samuel D. Epstein

A pathbreaking new perspective on derivation, the series of operations by which sentences are formed.

Derivations in Minimalism

Hisatsugu Kitahara

This collection explicates one of the core ideas underpinning Minimalist theory--explanation via simplification. It introduces and advances Minimalist theory for students and scholars in linguistics and related sub-disciplines of psychology, philosophy, and cognitive science.

A Minimalist Theory of Simplest Merge

This study investigates the distribution of traces and their antecedents. The first chapter outlines the Government and Binding theory, enabling those unfamiliar with this framework to understand the ensuing discussion. The second chapter concerns the Empty Category Principle. Argument/adjunct asymmetries are shown to follow from an independently motivated indexing algorithm, which entails that adjuncts display an impoverished indexing. The third chapter deduces the properties of A-chains from independently motivated principles, offering a thorough examination of Super-Raising, Improper Movement, and the Local Binding Condition. The final chapter challenges the standard assumptions regarding Case requirements on traces.

Traces and Their Antecedents

Norbert Hornstein

Essays present explicit syntactic analyses that adhere to programmatic minimalist guidelines. The essays in this book present explicit syntactic analyses that adhere to programmatic minimalist guidelines. Thus they show how the guiding ideas of minimalism can shape the construction of a new, more explanatory theory of the syntactic component of the human language faculty. Contributors Zeljko Boskovic, Samuel David Epstein, Robert Freidin, Erich M. Groat, Norbert Hornstein, Hisatsugu Kitahara, Howard Lasnik, Roger Martin, Jairo Nunes, Norvin Richards, Juan Uriagereka, Amy Weinberg Current Studies in Linguistics No. 32

Samuel David Epstein

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